


A Revelation

by Birdie_jc



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Black Character(s), F/F, Jewish Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22809196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdie_jc/pseuds/Birdie_jc
Summary: Anne Lister and Ann Walker as girls in Hasidic Brooklyn, NYC at the time of the Crown Heights riots. A story of unexpected friendship, being oneself and taking the odd risk."Climbed out of the window...which was a revelation. I could see for miles."
Relationships: Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 57





	1. It's possible to change your nature

Anne’s eyes were glued to the page when she felt the book drawn out of her hands.

She had trained herself to read her ill-begotten library books in English from right to left, mimicking the study of Hebrew text. In the thrill of the moment, though, she’d forgotten, completely caught up in the Order of the Phoenix’ ambush with Death Eaters in the Ministry of Magic. In her ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhood, those stories were what she craved – Magic. Transport. A world large enough to contain her.

The yeshiva teacher shook her head and wrote her a pass to the principal’s office. The secretary took the book from Anne as she walked through the door, handling it like a bomb before passing it over to Mrs. Priestley, who confronted Anne.

“What would your _mother”_ – she paused; Anne’s mother had left the community shortly after Anne had been born, and as customary, had not been permitted to take her children with her. “What would your _sister_ say? You’re barely in the bat mitzvah class and already bent on ruining your reputation.”

“Give it back, it’s mine!” Anne flashed. The principal’s wig sat the slightest bit askew, and Anne was secretly terrified this was who she’d one day turn into.

“Where did you get this?” Mrs. Priestley demanded, sounding vexed and annoyed. She looked at the inside pocket and the card stamped with dates. “Who gave you a library card?” With no answer from Anne, the principal set her lips grimly and tore off the glossy paperback front cover; in a second, the back cover followed. Anne almost cried out, but strangled it in her throat. The principal tossed the stripped book into the trash. It was a public library book, plenty of trouble to sneak away for, and with no way of paying for it, they’d never let her have another.

The bell rang, and Anne made for the door, the welcome escape of the hallways flooded with dozens of girls. But the principal said, “Anne. Another thing,” sharply enough for her to glance back, and when she saw the slip of lined paper the woman waved, it stopped her in her tracks and she pulled the door closed, her heart pounding.

On those slips, the girls were invited to ask any question, in confidence, to the rabbi’s wife, who would open the anonymous missives and leave a reply. Anne had slipped the paper in after endless heart-fluttering weeks beside pretty Marianna in her sixth-grade row of assembly seats. _Is it wrong to want to kiss a girl?_

“I wasn’t going to bring it up. But I was concerned enough to talk with the other teachers and match your handwriting. This is why you must only read kosher books. Outside, it’s full of dangerous ideas. You’re playing with fire.”

“You’re not going to tell…” Anne’s words trailed off. Mrs. Priestley gave her a sympathetic smile. “It’s possible to change your nature, Anne. You must pray to Hashem. To help you change.” She picked up her desk phone and dialed the Listers’ home number. But before the call could connect, Anne was running.

She dashed down the winding staircase and out onto the sun-soaked Brooklyn street, nearly deserted an hour before Sabbath was to start. Several more blocks, closer to Eastern Parkway and the boundary between the Jewish neighborhood and the rest of the bustling city. She stopped, lungs burning, on the edge of a little park, calmed by the familiar sound of a bouncing basketball.

Whenever envy sprung to her heart at not knowing her mother’s expanded world, Anne liked to watch the kids down at the court, their mainly African-American and West Indian neighbors, and the sense of liberty in their playing – girls nimbly jumping Double Dutch, siblings enthusiastically passing, blocking, and dunking the ball. She hitched herself up on the wall to watch, snagging and ripping her pleated uniform skirt. There were perhaps a dozen basketball players in the midst of a boisterous game, but her eyes focused in on a smaller, chubby girl, braids trimmed with bright barrettes swinging above her bare shoulders. It was the quality this younger girl – perhaps ten to Anne’s twelve – had of sinking shots with the best of them, while seeming to observe and take in every particle of the world around her. A clear, and open, and peaceful feeling in her luminous brown eyes. Anne gave a start when the girl met her eyes, broke into a wide smile, and waved her into the game.

Anne scrambled off the wall – torn stockings too now – and barreled into the midst of the neighborhood boys and this one girl, taking advantage of their astonishment to steal the ball.

“Ann, are you crazy?” one of the older brothers yelled to the small girl, but she shot him a quick “Shut up!” and gleefully flung her arms up, calling “Pass!” Anne did, and the satisfying thwack of her catch led to a swish through the net. The boys let out a yell and Anne followed her new friend back down the court, filling her lungs with a gasp of laughter, feeling fully alive.


	2. Instinct Beckoned her Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne tries to go home for Shabbat, but is confronted by Marian. Neighborhood events take a dangerous turn.

Their energy lasted for two half-court basketball games. What Anne lacked in practice she made up for in eager enthusiasm, and Ann and the boys offered helpful tips on how to launch the ball, pivot, and shoot layups from the best angle. Ann introduced her to her brother James, a lanky teenager with a band T-shirt and quick smile. Anne could sense the easy affection between the pair and envied the contrast with her own older sister.  
  
At last, breath spent, the girls moved over to the rusty swingset, digging at the gravel with their toes while they stole sideways glances at one another.  
  
“I’ve seen you before,” Ann said. “Watching through the fence. You always looked like you wanted to join in.”  
  
“Thanks for teaching me to shoot.” She wanted to say more, but didn’t know how to put it. “For letting me be me.”  
  
Just then a Hasidic man Anne didn’t recognize passed the playground and shot them an astounded look. “They don’t like us much, do they?” Ann asked frankly. “On your side of Eastern Parkway.”  
  
For a moment, Anne couldn’t meet her eyes. “I guess…we’re not the most trusting,” she offered. Her teachers’ explanation for not mixing with outsiders had to do with protecting their religious values, but she couldn’t really tell where religious prejudices ended and racial ones began.  
  
“But you’re different,” the younger girl ventured.  
  
In Anne’s family, those words were so often leveled as an accusation, but now they sounded like a hope. “I try to be.”  
  
“It’s hard. Being different.” Ann hunched her shoulders, and the sorrow in her face gave Anne a pang. So she changed the subject. “What do you like to do after school?”  
  
“Well, when it’s nice out we just about live down here at the court. I like to ride my bike. And draw pictures. I make my own comic books.”  
  
“Do you like to read?”  
  
Ann’s face lit up. “I love to read! Especially Harry Potter, I have the whole series!”  
  
“Can you tell me what happens at the end of the fifth one – Order of the Phoenix? I only got to the part where they get attacked in the Department of Mysteries, and they took it away. I’m dying to finish it.”  
  
“Of course! Or – wouldn’t you like to read it yourself? I’ll lend it to you.”  
  
“I don’t think I can wait that long.”  
  
Ann laughed and launched into the story, describing twists and turns of plot and characters with great animation, as if she pictured them unfolding clearly before their eyes.  
  
After a long time, sensing the change in afternoon light, Anne’s instinct beckoned her home, and she stood. “I have to go.”  
  
“See you tomorrow?” Ann offered.  
  
Anne grinned. Misfit as she was, friendly invitations were rare. “Yes, tomorrow!”  
  
She headed back up Eastern Parkway, passing small groups of fathers and sons headed to synagogue, and other girls on last-minute errands. Sometimes she imagined her world as a black-and-white photo, right and wrong delineated so clearly and unforgivingly. She caught a glimpse of her disheveled appearance in the window of their brownstone and climbed the stairs ready for the inevitable clash.  
  
For a moment when Anne stepped into the warm kitchen, she longed for the calm peace of Shabbat. The bubbling pot of chicken soup, the scent of brisket, an almost-memory of her mother’s hands circling the candles – this comforting world of order made her still. And quiet. She almost felt the fight melt out of her.  
  
Then her sister Marian walked in. “Where have you been?”  
  
“Playing basketball.”  
  
“At that park? With the shvartzes?”  
  
Anne’s temper flared at the rude term for their black neighbors. “Don’t call them that!”  
  
“You’ll be lucky if no one saw you. And don’t bother asking, we heard from the school all about your behavior.”  
  
“Why should you care?” muttered Anne.  
  
“Do you know where Aunt and Father went today?” Anne shrugged. “The shadchan. They’re going to talk about a match for me.” Anne giggled – though Marian had recently turned eighteen, the customary age for shidduch dates to begin, it was hilarious to picture her sitting and blushing across the table at some awkward yeshiva boy. For a moment, she felt sympathy for her sister’s vulnerability, but Marian continued in a fury. “And you are not going to ruin this for me!”  
  
“Who’d marry you anyway?” Anne scoffed.  
  
“We’re having dinner guests and I want to make a good impression. I don’t need this kind of thing at the table. I don’t need you. Our mother already did my reputation enough damage by leaving. She should have taken you with her.” Anne flew at her, ready to pull hair, but Marian was stronger, and she wrestled her through the bedroom door and turned the lock on her.  
  
For a moment Anne banged on the door, but then on impulse she bounded across the room and pried open the window to the fire escape. The rusty metal creaked and groaned underneath her as she stepped over the sill and climbed down one flight, thrilled and trembling as the ladder swayed. She took in a deep breath and looked out over the Crown Heights rooftops, lit with sun streaming down the avenues. Which was a revelation. She could see for miles.  
  
Marian’s astonished face appeared at a window. “It’s a sin to break Shabbat!” she yelled, and Anne dangled nimbly for a moment from the bottom rung. “Then you’d better not follow me.” She heard a knock below, and saw Marian make her choice, closing the window though her face was still full of concern. As Anne dropped to the sidewalk, the sun’s last rays disappeared, leaving a rosy glow as evening ticked closer. With nowhere else to go, and a fizzy feeling in her heart she couldn’t name, she retraced her steps toward the basketball court.  
  
Ann and James were just leaving. “Are you okay?” Ann asked, and to her surprise Anne felt a prickle of tears. “I can’t be at home right now.”  
  
Ann squeezed her hand in a warm grip. “You can come with us.” She followed the siblings into one of the large apartment buildings, up flights of stairs and down a cramped hallway. Inside the bright kitchen was a tangle of voices, and a tall woman stood at the stove, her brown face and wispy curls a mirror of Ann’s.  
  
Anne wished she didn’t look like such an obvious outsider. For a moment, wariness flashed across the woman’s face, but then she smiled at them all and put an arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “You brought a friend, Ann?”  
  
“Can we make her a plate?”  
  
Ann’s mother filled her plate with jerk chicken, sweet potatoes, and salad, and the two girls took their dinner out to the front stoop and the cooling air. Anne felt a twinge of guilt, but was too hungry to care whether anything was kosher. And it was all delicious, rich spices lingering on her tongue.  
  
When they finished and set their plates aside, a group of girls beckoned Ann across the street. Anne came with her, and after quick introductions to friends and cousins, they took a turn at the ropes for Double Dutch.  
  
They were still playing, Anne’s legs learning the rhythm of the whistling ropes, when the sound of gunshots ripped through the gathering dusk.


	3. A Small Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girls witness the epicenter of the chaos and find shelter.

Instinctively, Ann jerked her friend to the ground, keeping them shielded from the street behind a parked car. Anne felt the pavement beneath her before her own street smarts kicked in. There were high-pitched screams as the group of children scattered, and tires screeched on the road. 

“We have to get back inside,” Ann whispered. Her body tensed, as they both waited for a moment of stillness. “Now!” Anne crouched beside her, shaking, and they bolted out from behind the car in a flash of movement. And found themselves staring down the barrel of a gun.

The boy who held it was James’s age, and his eyes widened in confusion as his aim jerked from one girl’s face to the other. Anne wanted to run but her legs had turned to ice. At last he seemed to realize they were children, and brought the gun back to his side in one sharp move. Ann recovered first and they dashed into the street, which was rapidly filling with a crowd. Terror and fury were palpable as dozens of people streamed towards some unknown destination.

“Ann!” It was James, fighting his way toward them from the apartment building’s door, his expression tormented as the crowd blocked his way. Ann pushed between the people closing them in, and Anne almost lost sight of her. Then James was tackled and they saw him go down amid a flailing group of men. “No!” Ann screamed, but the many shoulders formed a solid wall and Anne dragged her away towards the only possible opening. “We can’t help. He’ll be all right, but we won’t if we stay here.” 

They ran onto Utica Avenue, and at the far end of the block Anne glimpsed the source of the fury. A car had veered far up onto the sidewalk, crashed and pinned two small figures against the iron grate of a brick building. In the murky light, some tried desperately to lift the car away from the trapped children, while others jerked the driver out through the window and rained down blows. As Hatzolah – the Jewish ambulance corps – and the flashing lights of police arrived on the scene, the crowd’s numbers swelled. 

Anne searched for the first door with a mezuzah and pounded on it. Just like other children learned not to talk to strangers, she’d been taught: if you’re lost and in trouble, find another Jew. Rapid footsteps sounded behind the door, and after a peek from the window, a woman with a headscarf appeared, pulling them into the entryway with a flood of Yiddish. “You shouldn’t be out, you’ll have to wait here till it stops – ” She halted abruptly after a closer look at Ann, and switched to English to address her. “I can’t keep you here. It’s too dangerous. You’ll have to go back to your own people.”

Anne grabbed the younger girl’s hand again. “Please – ” But the woman only cracked the door and looked from one end of the street to the other, searching for who might have followed them, fear written on her face. So the girls scrambled back down the steps and kept running.

Like Lot’s wife, Anne couldn’t help looking back at the destruction, and heard a woman’s anguished scream as one still, small figure was lifted from the site of the crash. Another voice seemed to roar directly beside them: “Do you feel what I feel? Do you feel the pain? What are you going to do about it?”

The street was fully dark now, and at the end of the block, a sudden flare of light and heat made them jerk back, nearly falling. Anne could distinguish the burning outline of an overturned car. In this surge of adrenaline she had stopped feeling or thinking, and was now aware only of fragments: the sound of breaking bottles, sharp pain of a rock glancing off her arm, racial epithets and a threat that made her blood run cold: “Let’s take Kingston Avenue!” A flash came to her mind: Marian’s white face in the window of their house on Kingston. She stumbled against a curb and fell to her knees, and both girls were jostled and half-trampled by the onlookers around them. The only thing that grounded her and made her rise back to her feet was the urgent press of Ann’s hand in hers.

As the crowd propelled them into the heart of the Jewish neighborhood, she suddenly realized what building they were beside – the dilapidated social hall that connected the yeshiva and the synagogue. It had one basement window whose lock hadn’t been mended after an incident of minor vandalism, and it had often come in handy to Anne when she needed to sneak in late or otherwise avoid the administrators’ eyes. She found the right pane and nearly cried with relief as it jerked open, scraping her way through and turning to help boost Ann down. They sat trembling on the carpeted floor, and for the first time Anne could feel her scrapes from their hard fall; she touched one knee and blood came away through the fabric. Ann looked to be in a similar condition.

Suddenly, the blue and red lights of a squad car flared directly above them, and a siren shrieked. “What’s happening?” Anne murmured, half to herself. But with a glimpse at the other girl, she saw the police’s arrival had shaken her the way nothing else yet had. Ann was short of breath and trembling. “What can I do?” Anne asked, but her friend could not speak. The lights would not turn on, and Anne ransacked the social hall cupboard for a candle and matches. In its small light, she put her arms around Ann, who clung to her as if her life depended on it.


	4. The Economy of Revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t like the dark.”  
> “I’ll make it light.”
> 
> TW for conversation about gun violence/trauma.

As soon as Ann could move again, Anne had thought it best to move them further into the dark warren of school hallways, away from the flashing lights and sounds of the street. She brought the candle along, casting a strange glow over the ordinary classroom desks and chairs. On impulse, she caught up the corded phone near the reception desk, and heard the faint dial tone. She dialed home with trembling fingers, praying the connection was working and that they would answer despite the rules of Shabbat. 

Her Aunt Anne answered, sounding breathless. “Yes?”

“Tante?” 

“Anne? Where are you?”

“I’m safe.” If she told them where, they would come looking for her. She knew it, and could not bear for them to be harmed on her account in the chaos outside. But even more, she felt drawn to stay with Ann. “I’m with a friend.”

“What friend?” The panic in her aunt’s usually calm and gentle voice filled her with guilt. “Are you all right?” 

“I’m always all right, Tante. Everything will be all right.” There was no reply, and it took her a moment to realize the line had been cut. Whatever else happened that night, they would be on their own.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t call,” she told Ann, who seemed to be recovering. “I’ll make sure you get home, I promise.”

“How?” Ann asked practically.

It was not a funny moment, but Anne laughed out of nervousness. “In my world, girls are invisible.”

After perhaps an hour, the electricity still had not returned. Ann waited quietly, her arms folded on a desktop and propping up her head. Restless as always, Anne poked around the sixth-grade classroom and found a cardboard box full of Shabbat candle-lighting kits the girls would hand out to passersby on Friday afternoons. She glanced back at Ann, who was very still, her face now hidden.

“Are you asleep?”

“I don’t like the dark.”

“I’ll make it light.” There were at least fifty neat little cases, and Anne busied herself lighting each small tea candle, filling the room like a constellation. Marian usually got to light them at home and say the blessing, so it was a welcome distraction to light as many as she wanted.

Ann glanced up, her face drawn with worry. “I wish we could watch the news.” 

“No TV here, power or not,” Anne said wryly. Then inspiration struck her. “Mrs. Priestley’s office. The radio.” 

This time, Ann had the presence of mind to pull out her keychain, which was attached to a small Hello Kitty flashlight. Anne felt like a burglar as the principal’s door creaked open on its hinges, and she found and tuned their tiny link to the outside. She wondered what Mrs. Priestley listened to when they occasionally saw her sitting there with a small earphone. Music? The news? What secrets would she confess in a note to the rabbi’s wife?

On the radio, they heard that the Hasidic rabbi’s entourage had struck two Guyanese immigrant children, killing one, seven-year-old Gavin Cato. In the intervening several hours, a crowd had stabbed and killed Yankel Rosenbaum, a young Jewish university student. Neither girl could speak, and they listened wide-eyed, curtained by the dark office from the world fracturing outside. They both knew that the waves of debt and payback never stopped in the gritty economy of revenge. 

“Let’s turn it off,” Anne said. Her hand brushed against Ann’s as she dialed it down to silence. This time they met eyes in a brief glance, looked away, and looked back at each other as if they might find answers there. She tried to think of something – anything – to say, but Ann spoke first.

“Did you notice that whenever my brother and I walk out the door…my mother watches like it’s the last time she might see us? And now James…”

“If we go back to the window,” Anne said, jumping to her feet. “Maybe the police can help find –”

“No,” the younger girl said forcefully, and Anne stopped in her tracks, shocked to hear the strength and anger in her voice. “My father was shot by the police.” 

“Oh, Ann.”

“We were on the subway platform. There’d been a robbery, and they were looking for a black man, and they shot him before they realized he wasn’t the one. All of a sudden he was on the ground, and I was holding him. I thought he was dying. They called an ambulance, and I never let go, all the way to the hospital.” 

“You’re so brave.”

“No, I was terrified.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re not still brave.”

“I was lucky. We got to bring him home. But people like us don’t get lucky twice.”

The idea of luck struck Anne as strangely alien. Her family and teachers saw events as preordained, determined by faith rather than chance. But this seemed more like a city of luck, a city of risk. What kind of God would have planned this night’s events? She realized something about how she’d watched the basketball players with envy. “I always thought that if you’re not religious, you could be free. But I guess it’s not that simple.”

“A week later, he went back to work. I pretend it never happened, like it was a bad dream. But I’m afraid for him. I’m afraid for James. Because whoever the police go looking for tonight, they’ll match the description.”

Anne held the silence. There were so many things about the world she didn’t understand, and she desperately wanted to. 

“After it happened, I wanted to hide at home, but he wouldn’t let me. He’d tell me to keep my head up, not to be afraid of anyone.”

A memory of her own came to mind out of the web of stories in the dark. “ ‘I rise above it,’ ” Anne murmured.

“Hmm?”

“That’s what my grandmother Chana would say. I was named after her.”

“Named after?”

“It makes more sense in Hebrew.” Anne stood stiffly from the floor and eased onto the small office sofa. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but when Ann joined her the closeness made her feel protected, like when she and her cousins would build blanket forts in the living room on holiday sleepovers. 

“Why did she say that - ‘I rise above it’?”

Anne had always felt it her instinctive responsibility to carry the difficult stories her family chose to share. If her religion could be wrapped up in one word, it would be memory, and that would stay with her regardless of pushing at boundaries, regardless of conscious belief. It would turn her into a vivid dreamer and a compulsive writer. “When she was a girl in Poland, the Nazis sent her family to a concentration camp. They were crammed into a train car full of prisoners – Chana, her mother, her sister, and a baby brother – and they knew they might be killed. But there was a tiny window on the cattle car roof.”

The story had a distant and faraway quality, but Anne would never forget her grandmother pointing to a small picture frame on the corner deli wall to show her the size of the window. “Chana’s mother wanted to go with them, to keep them safe. But she had the baby. So as they slowed near the camp, she put her locket around my grandmother’s neck and boosted the girls out through the window.”

Ann turned on her side to face her, so close Anne could see herself reflected in the dark eyes. Their voices were whispers now. “This locket?” 

Anne glanced down and noticed she was playing with the chain of the necklace that normally stayed tucked inside her collar. It was thumbnail-sized, made of slightly tarnished silver with an inlaid pearl heart. She clicked it open – there was always something friendly and radiant about the sepia photo of this woman she’d never met. “Yes. My mother left it with me before she went away.” 

“Do you always wear it?"

“It’s like a charm. So I can be brave.”

“What happened? To your grandmother.” 

Anne echoed the words she’d heard many times. “She was the first one to jump down from the train, and she escaped into the woods. Her sister was second, and a guard saw her and shot her.” 

Ann let out a quick, sharp breath, and Anne felt again the comforting press of a hand in hers. Her heart felt full as a balloon at this easy intimacy, this friendship forged in the crucible of the night’s danger.

“Whenever I hear sirens…I feel like I’m back there on the platform with my father, about to lose him. Even in the middle of the night, I can see it. Do you have dreams like that? About losing someone you love?”

In Anne’s dreams, the image was always immediate: a young girl turning to look back. The figure crumpled on the ground. And the decision to keep running – the decision that led to her own life. “It’s not an excuse, but I think part of why we’re not trusting…” Anne said, “is that when my grandparents came here, those dreams were real.”

Ann nodded. “When you ran onto the basketball court today, you looked like something was chasing you.”

“I guess in my family, we’re always running from something.”

“You said your mother went away?” Her friend’s voice was very gentle. Anne found it was easier to confide this secret to a stranger, than to face the truth the whole neighborhood knew.  
“I wasn’t old enough to remember it,” Anne said. “But I can picture my mother. Walking away from me. Aunt Anne said she couldn’t follow the rules. I can’t either. So maybe that means I’ll end up leaving, too.”

“I hope you stay,” Ann said. 

Anne thought of the many times she had prayed for just that – to be as her family expected, to belong, to be loved. She felt more accepted in this moment than she could have imagined when she climbed out the fire escape after Marian’s outburst. Her heart ached for James and for Ann, who had nearly lost her father and stood to lose more. 

“Close your eyes,” Anne whispered. “I promise, in the morning, I’ll make sure you get home.” She rummaged in the closet to find an old coat, then lay back down, tucking it around them both. From sheer exhaustion, Ann’s body relaxed, and she lay back, her shiny braids tumbling against Anne’s own brown hair. 

As Anne glanced around the office, trying to sleep, Mrs. Priestley’s words came back to her. “You must pray to Hashem. To help you change.” Whenever she fell short in this orderly world, they made her believe she was the one flawed and broken. What if the world around them was broken, while she and Ann were the ones made as nature intended?

When they woke to streaks of blue daylight coming through the blinds, it took Anne a long moment to realize where she was. The previous night’s events seemed unreal. Then she gently shook Ann’s shoulder until she stirred. She peered out the window; the street looked in disarray, but oddly quiet and deserted. “Come on. We have to go home now.”

They left by the back door instead of the window. As they looked out from its protection onto the glass-strewn street, the girls felt intensely vulnerable. Some of the last night’s fear had returned to Ann’s eyes, and she shrank back from the doorway. “I can’t.”

Anne unfastened her locket, and then clasped it around her friend’s neck. “Wear this,” she said, “and you’ll feel perfectly safe.”


	5. Not Only When It's Easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girls find home, in more ways than one.
> 
> *There will be another chapter!

The girls made their way along the narrow, green avenue dividing Eastern Parkway. So far it seemed deserted – a police car here and there, refuse left by the crowd, branches overhead wavering in the wind. Anne had never seen the block without a single passerby. She wondered if it was possible the previous night’s events had blown over, or what had caused this temporary standstill.

Then a sharp voice called her name.

She turned to see her cousin Joseph rounding a corner, within a group of half a dozen young Jewish men and yeshiva boys, easily recognizable with their black hats and sidelocks. They looked the worse for wear. “Everyone is looking for you,” Joseph continued. “Come here _now.”_

“No!” Anne yelled back. Not after they had seen each other this far.

He took a few steps toward her, and then stopped. The girls turned to look behind them – on the opposite side of the block, a small group of African-American men had arrived. Anne recognized several of the basketball players, and then from the middle of the group stepped James. One eye and the side of his face were swollen, but Ann let out a wordless cry of relief at seeing him otherwise unharmed. He held out his arms to his sister, and Anne felt her friend tense as if to run, but then she, too, stepped back.

A crackle of tension hung in the air. As long as the girls were in the middle of the street, there would be a truce. Anne didn’t know what would happen if they moved. She knew Joseph’s friends would not harm a child, and similarly felt no fear of James, but what the men might do to one another was a different story.

“Come and get us,” Ann called, a decisive note in her firm voice.

James stepped forward slowly, raising his hands in a brief gesture to the rival group. When he was about halfway to the median, Joseph did the same. They edged toward one another warily, and as if it were negotiated, the rest of each group stayed in place. James reached them first and put his arms around his sister. He gave Anne a reassuring smile, and only then did she let go, the pain in her chest telling her she’d forgotten to breathe.

Then Joseph was behind her, pulling her away. “Get her home safe,” he said grudgingly, less to James than in his direction, and James nodded and replied, “You too.” She saw James swing Ann onto his shoulders, and then felt her cousin hustle her away.

“Wait,” she said, stopping. “I wanted to make sure – ”

“Enough, Anne,” he said tiredly, and steered her into the safety of the group with an arm around her as if expecting her to bolt. Questions rained down on her as they made their way swiftly toward home – “Where were you all night?” “Who was that girl?” “Why did you leave the neighborhood?”

“Come on, we all know she’s crazy,” Joseph said, and Anne reached up to whack the back of his head. There was normally little love lost between them, but after the scant normalcy of that moment the boys parted in front of her brownstone, and she shrank back against her cousin after all. One front window had been shattered with a rock, and there was a swastika on their door. She went up the front walkway as if in a trance.

When she stepped in the door, her Aunt Anne grabbed hold of her so tightly she cried out. It felt as if she wasn’t even looking at her niece, but at someone else, from some other time. “Tante, you’re hurting me,” Anne protested, but didn’t pull away. Her father and Marian appeared from the living room, and after a moment her aunt regained her composure and loosened her grip.

“I’m sorry,” Anne offered.

Aunt Anne swept a hand across her eyes. “I’m almost glad you weren’t here. Last night…It sounded like a pogrom.”

Her father took over the questioning, kneeling in front of her, his face creased with worry. “Why would you climb down the fire escape?”

“Because it was _there!”_ Marian put in.

“What happened out there? Did anyone hurt you?”

“No.”

“Where did you spend the night?” The questions felt accusing, and she hesitated. “Answer me, Anne!”

She didn’t feel like lying. “In the yeshiva basement. With a friend I met in the park.”

Her father only stared, but Aunt Anne came to the rescue. “No more questions now, Jeremy. Go to the synagogue. We don’t keep Shabbat only when it’s easy.”

While Marian went to send the news she’d been found, Aunt Anne helped her change out of the school uniform, washing and bandaging her various scrapes. Marian took her to the kitchen and put a cup of tea with milk and a slice of warm kugel in front of her, though Anne could only bring herself to eat a few bites. Marian regarded her with a mix of sympathy and exasperation. “Do you never worry about what things look like?”

Anne chewed and swallowed. “You worry enough for us both.”

“Anne, this is Crown Heights. People talk. And it isn’t always very nice.”

“Well then,” Anne said. She felt a rush of anger – even if she told all that had happened last night, her family wouldn’t understand. “Shame on them.”

They sat in the living room and did what they might ordinarily do on a Saturday afternoon, Aunt Anne and Marian each with a book and Anne leafing through her journal, fingers itching to scribble though the Sabbath rules prevented her from picking up a pencil. After awhile she took an old photo album from the cupboard and brought it away to the bedroom, knowing her sister and aunt found this particular album upsetting to see. She looked at pictures of her mother, and watched at the window, waiting to see the customary three stars that would mark nightfall.

Just after sunset, her father came home to make Havdalah, marking the transition between the sacred and the everyday. Candlelight flickered over their faces as he sang the familiar melody. He offered the blessing over the wine, the spices, and the braided candle, then extinguished the flame in the wine cup with a sizzle.

Aunt Anne went into the kitchen to cover a basket of baking, then beckoned to Anne and Marian. “Come. We need to stop by the shiva for the Rosenbaum boy.”

On an ordinary Saturday night, her cousins would be out on their bicycles, riding to the corner to pick up a kosher pizza. It was unsettling to step out into the dark street, but many others were on their way to and from the synagogue or the Rosenbaums’ house in quiet groups. It seemed the rioting was over, then, with this odd stillness left in its wake.

Anne felt shy as they entered and gave their condolences to Mr. and Mrs. Rosenbaum – she’d only seen them a couple of times, at the big synagogue on high holy days, and wouldn’t have had a clue what to say if Aunt Anne hadn’t taken the lead. What were the words for such a situation? Half the neighborhood seemed to be there, including Mariana, who sat demurely and helped to keep her younger siblings quiet. Anne caught Mariana’s eye across the room and motioned her into the entryway, out of the visitors’ view. She was surprised that the butterflies she normally felt in her classmate’s presence had stilled.

“They said last night you were out in the street,” Mariana whispered, scandal woven into her words. “Was it awful?”

“Yes,” Anne said. Something in her tone stopped Mariana from pressing for further detail.

“Joseph said when they found you, you were with a black girl.”

“She’s my friend,” Anne said.

“Yes, but they killed Yankel.”

“There’s no _‘they,’_ ” Anne said. “Everyone has lost someone.”

“I’m worried about you.”

She supposed this was with good reason. Mariana was one of her few “respectable” friends, and Anne was usually the one who got them into trouble, leaving Mariana to sort them out of it. But they had shared enough secrets that she also knew Mariana would try to understand.

“Tell me more about it. When you’re ready,” Mariana said. “Also…” she rummaged through the coats hanging behind them to find her purse. “I knew you were in trouble, so I sneaked in and saved your book.” She held out the torn copy of _Harry Potter_ that had been in the principal’s wastebasket. It was so strange to think that had happened only yesterday.

When Aunt Anne came to collect her, she looked relieved to see them talking. Anne knew they appreciated Mariana’s good influence – and almost laughed knowing her classmate’s family would never think the same about her own.

After the last anxious night, Anne fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. She dreamed about the boy with the gun, and when Marian shook her awake, realized she had cried out. Shortly the door opened and Aunt Anne stood there too in her nightgown. Anne propped herself up on her elbows to look at her aunt, who turned on the lamp and sat at the end of her bed. She was grateful they didn’t ask her to explain, but realized another question was on her mind.

“The children who were hit by that car…” Anne asked, “did they survive?”

“One of them did – the little girl,” her aunt replied. “Not the boy.”

For the first time since it had all begun, Anne wept. Her aunt held her, and Marian lay down on her other side. They stayed with her until she fell asleep again.

And she realized why she’d no longer felt butterflies near Mariana. Now it was Ann’s eyes she could see at night when she closed her own.

…………………………….

The doorbell rang the next morning before Anne was up, and footsteps came quickly down the hall before Marian came in to roust her. “You’d better come to the door.”

Ann and James stood on the porch, James with a can of paint, and Ann with her hands shyly in her pockets. On impulse, Anne jumped to hug her.

“You’re all right!” she exclaimed.

Ann smiled. “You promised we would be.”

When she stepped back, Aunt Anne was behind her, and hesitated only a moment before inviting them in. While the girls ate breakfast together, James, without asking, painted over the graffiti on their door and swept up the glass. She could see out the kitchen window that there were others in the street helping, Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors steadily mending the damage of the riot.

Ann handed back the locket. “Thank you for letting me wear it. It did make me braver.”

“How did you find my house?”

“You might not know, but people talk a lot about you,” Ann teased. “You were easy to find.”

In the wake of all that had happened, Aunt Anne would still not allow her out of the house, so her friend stayed there, after they had thanked James and he had gone home. They drew pictures and baked cookies, made a pillow fort, and finally settled down to ask urgent questions as if they were the only two people in the world.

“What’ll you do when you grow up?” she asked Ann.

“I don’t know. There are so many choices. Maybe I’ll be an artist. Or a pilot. Or a zookeeper. Or maybe a pro basketball player first and then all three. What about you?”

“I guess…I’ll get married?” Anne said slowly. The other girls liked to picture that, plan out their possible future as wives and mothers, but she’d never daydreamed the same for herself. “There aren’t a lot of choices here. And I realize the hardest part of growing up…is feeling like I do have a choice. To be myself. Or to be here. But I can’t choose both.”

“We’ll always be ourselves,” Ann said. “I think we were made. I don’t think we choose.”

………………………..

The first morning back at school, Anne dressed in her uniform carefully and brushed her hair into a neat braid. She packed her schoolbooks and took the paper bag lunch her aunt handed her. She started out the door, but looked back, and her aunt’s face was full of such loving worry that she stopped and turned on the threshold, words tumbling out.

“Tante,” she said. “I’m not going to leave. Not the way Mom did. I’ll be good at school, I’ll pray to Hashem. I’ll do the right thing, just like you taught me. But if I stay…I need to make friends. And not just with people like us – I want to bring Ann over to visit and know you’ll be good to her. I need to explore outside the neighborhood. I need to write, and read library books, and play basketball, and ask questions. I…I want to meet Mom. You must know – _someone_ must know where she is. I want to understand who I am.”

Her aunt looked overwhelmed by the flood of words. “Anne, you’ll be late.”

“Mrs. Priestley said to pray for God to change me, but I don’t think I can change, I really don’t think I can.”

Aunt Anne reached out an arm and pulled her close. Anne rested her head against her aunt’s shoulder, but couldn’t read her expression. “Do you want me to change?” she asked hesitantly.

“Never,” her aunt said, and Anne dashed off down the block with a smile, her skirt flying out like wings. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Barry Deutch's "Mirka" series for Aunt Anne's line: "We don't keep Shabbat only when it's easy."


	6. I Want To Be With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is this AU's version of the hilltop scene! Credit to Sally Wainwright for borrowed lines from the script.

Anne didn’t ask her family permission before visiting church with Ann. It was the brightness that struck her on the day she tagged along – elaborate hats, fans, colorful dresses and floral patterns. The crowd pressed together in the pews, all in the same room – no gallery separating her. It was the communal feeling she felt drawn to most. When they prayed for the families of Gavin and Angela Cato, the children who’d been struck by the car, everyone cried. And when they sang, she thought how Aunt Anne would love the freedom here of singing out with a full voice, unbound by the rule of kol isha. She felt as if they’d been lifted outside themselves to shimmer in space.

She didn’t ask permission, either, to bring Ann with her to synagogue. By then it was Rosh Hashanah, the start of the high holy days, and there was jubilance in the crowd as they climbed the stairs at the big synagogue on Eastern Parkway. Aunt Anne and Marian joined the girls on either side as they slipped into the half-hidden women’s balcony, and Anne was touched by their support, the way they lent their respectability in defense of her guest. But in the middle of the service, as the rabbi asked congregants to stand for the mourner’s kaddish, Anne made her way to the front balcony. On the night of the riots, she had told Ann: In my world, girls are invisible. Ready to draw attention and break that unwritten rule, she cleared her throat and leaned forward so the men would be sure to see her, ignoring the “tsk…tsks” and a cousin’s hand tugging her to sit down. 

The rabbi made sweeping eye contact in an arc across the room, and in turn the men spoke the names of those to be remembered. “Gavin Cato,” Anne said in a clear voice, and there was a moment of stillness before he nodded and continued on. 

During the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the community was charged with reflecting on their lives over the past year and making amends with anyone they’d wronged. In Anne’s yeshiva class, the girls were assigned to make a list of everything they’d need to ask forgiveness for. As she sat tapping her pencil and glanced up, she saw Mrs. Priestley regarding her as if she knew many things that ought to be on Anne’s list. But she remembered her aunt’s advice - “Apologize for the things you’ve done wrong, but never for who you are” – and gave the principal a polite nod without letting it rattle her. 

When it was time for tashlich, she and Ann joined the local families tossing bread crumbs to the Prospect Park ducks, “casting off” their sins to float downstream. Mariana came over and the three girls parted from the crowd, wandering along a Prospect Park sidewalk. Sun filtered down through the low trees arching over the bank. As Anne gazed at Ann, who was captivated by the ducks and stretching out her arms to them over the railing, Mariana caught her eye knowingly, her expression sparkling with mirth. Feeling as if her classmate saw right through her, Anne blushed and quickly tried to compose her face before Ann could notice the dreamy look.

Things at home were changing rapidly. Marian had hit it off with a young scholar, Yaakov, whom the matchmaker had sent her way. Between their carefully chaperoned phone calls, she could be seen at all hours with an uncharacteristically giddy smile. Anne disliked this impending change, and tried to bolt upstairs during the official l’chaim celebrating the pair’s engagement, but her father strong-armed her into polite attendance. Afterwards, she thoroughly tested Yaakov to see if he had patience and a sense of humor befitting her sister. She convinced him to take them ice skating in the park, challenging him to races as her blades flashed across the rink’s surface and he tottered along in her wake trying to find his balance. She assigned him reading to see if he would be horrified by her library books, and dragged him into a basketball game where he made a decent showing against James’ crew. He merited her reluctant approval when, after a shopping trip with Marian, he brought home her first diary with a key – privacy she appreciated, though she and Ann were in the process of creating an elaborate secret code with which to exchange messages.

Their birthdays were close together – Ann turned eleven, and Anne turned thirteen. Low on pocket money since few parents were willing to host such a madcap babysitter, Anne gifted her friend a small turtle she’d found in the park, and received in return a homemade comic book and, from the family, a pizza party where she discovered the joys of pepperoni.

As a Bat Mitzvah gift, her aunt offered to let her have her ears pierced and get her first pair of earrings– the same gift they’d given Marian – but Anne looked so horrified when it was mentioned that they all burst out laughing. 

“Can I go on a trip instead?” she asked.

“What kind of trip?” her father asked, his brow furrowing. 

He agreed, after some coaxing, to take her to the nearest bus tour office, and they brought home pamphlets and debated the relative merits of Coney Island, the Statue of Liberty (Anne was disappointed to find out tourists could no longer climb into the torch), and the Bronx Zoo. But as they sat around the kitchen table, she realized the pamphlets had only been a prelude. She knew what journey she wanted to take, but to speak it in front of the whole family felt forbidden. Then she thought of Ann beside her in the synagogue balcony and felt brave enough.

“I want to meet Mom.”

Nothing more was said on the matter until, at dinner a few nights later, Aunt Anne got up to take a call. She closed the kitchen door and talked behind it for about fifteen minutes, before she returned looking very serious – the same look she usually got after a call from school. “What is it, Tante?” Anne asked apprehensively, racking her brain for any recent transgressions. 

“We’ve been in touch with your mother. She’s living in Manhattan, on the Lower East Side.”

It was so close – right across the Brooklyn Bridge. All the times she had missed her mother and wondered where she could be, only a twenty-minute subway ride had separated them. “She’s agreed to come here to Brooklyn on Sunday to see you. You can meet her at the front entrance of the botanical gardens at twelve o’clock,” her aunt said.

“Sunday?” Anne’s mouth felt dry. It was so soon. She almost felt scared. What had possessed her to ask for such a thing?

When she invited Ann to accompany her to the meeting, her friend agreed readily. It was one of the first warm spring days, marked by the appearance of a helados cart near the playground, and they bought Dixie cups of the smooth ice to savor between games. 

“What do you think she’s like?” Ann asked.

“I don’t know. I just hope she recognizes me. Aunt Anne said they sent one of my school pictures.” She showed Ann a copy – perhaps a year old, with her looking very neat and serious, on her best behavior.

“It’s not really like you,” Ann said thoughtfully. This was true – Anne had sprouted up that year, and felt very much like she’d been dropped into a grown-up body without her consent. But more so, the whole spirit of the photo was wrong – it tried too hard to mask her imperfections. “She’ll know you anyway,” Ann reassured. ”Because you both can’t help being different.”

That morning, Anne spent longer than usual getting ready. She gazed in the mirror, wondering if her mother would see something of herself in Anne – that same impulsiveness she both rued and reveled in. “Marian, don’t you want to come with me?” she asked. 

Her sister turned from organizing her sewing basket and sighed. The pile of fine tablecloths, towels, and household linens was mounting in her wardrobe and she liked to look them over with pride. “It’s different when you’re old enough to remember being left behind.” 

When their mother left, Anne would have been too young to notice any change for long, but Marian would have been six, just starting school. She’d have felt the sense of abandonment, heard the looks and whispers of those around her. Perhaps she had even felt judged, the same way Anne did when she tried and failed to measure up to the model of propriety.

“Are you angry with her?” Anne asked. 

“No…I think it would just be too hard. You’ve wanted to meet her for such a long time, and I’m glad that you can. But she doesn’t fit into my life here, and she doesn’t want to.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we weren’t enough to keep her here!” Marian burst out. Anne stepped forward and put her arms around her sister for a moment, realizing that they were now almost the same height. Marian sat down and ran her hands over the cloth that would become her wedding chuppah, tracing the golden Hebrew letters, the bright red and green birds, flowers and vines that replicated their grandmother’s handiwork brought from the old country. Then she continued more calmly. “The ones who leave…I see how they judge us. They think our community is backward, that we’re missing out on some kind of freedom. That to be a woman here is to be oppressed. I have everything I could want here,” Marian said. “I’m going to be married, have a family and a peaceful home. And if it comes with certain limits, I accept them. That is also a choice.” The resolute tremor in her sister’s voice echoed her own determination. 

“Don’t you ever wonder what we’re missing?”

Marian gave a decisive shake of her head. “Just because our world is traditional doesn’t mean it’s any less full.” 

They didn’t talk about these sorts of things very often. Anne realized she didn’t reflect very much on what her sister thought or felt. She was so used to vehemently making herself heard that she hadn’t often stopped to listen. 

“I don’t mean to hurt you. That’s not why I’m going,” she muttered.

“I know, Anne,” Marian said softly. “And when you come back, no matter how it goes, we’ll be here for you.”

It was nearly the peak of cherry blossom season at the botanical gardens on Sunday. Families were scattered across the lawn with picnic blankets. Anne had ensured their early arrival, and she and Ann walked through the avenue of cherry trees, catching the satin-pink petals that drifted down around them. At a time of such burning anticipation she felt better in motion, walking faster and faster among the Japanese garden and lily ponds until she realized her friend was having trouble keeping up, and reluctantly slowed the pace. After a while the sky turned overcast and a few drops began to fall; many of the other visitors started packing up to go home. When the wind picked up and the rain fell harder, they went indoors to the bonsai room. It was Anne’s favorite part of the garden – miniature trees dwarfed by their oversized blossoms, plants eighty or ninety years old but still the size of seedlings. The warmth of the greenhouse felt like summer. A young couple had found the same place, and were embracing openly in a way so alien to Anne’s world it made her blush deeply and feel she should turn away. 

“What do you think it feels like to be in love?” Ann asked. The question was rather more lyrical than she was used to from her sensible friend, and Anne was taken aback. Then she met Ann’s intense look and felt vulnerable, seen.

“I think it feels…like your heart’s turned into seltzer water. And it’s fizzing. And your chest feels big like a balloon.”

“How do you know if someone’s in love with you?”

Anne thought of Yaakov’s first meeting with Marian. “They give you flowers.”

The younger girl scooped up a fallen red blossom from the tile floor and put it in Anne’s hair. They giggled.

“And they take you on adventures,” Ann continued.

“Like what?”

“Oh…Prospect Park. The carousel, the gardens.”

“Or a basement during a riot,” Anne joked.

“I wouldn’t say no.”

Standing shoulder to shoulder, their arms brushed against one another’s and Anne felt an overwhelming rush of heat. Incongruously, it reminded her of the blazing light from the overturned car that August night on the street. Her chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe. She stepped away, but Ann pulled her back. Automatically, Anne glanced around, but saw no one near them.

Her eyes caught the clock on the wall – it was quarter to noon. She gave an involuntary shiver.

“Are you cold?”

Anne shook her head. “What if she wants me to leave with her?” she whispered. 

“It doesn’t matter if you decide to leave or stay,” Ann said. “I want to be with you.” Her eyes locked with Anne’s, and they slipped completely from view behind the verdant branches. Their faces were nearly touching. Anne felt like her heart would burst. She hardly knew what she mumbled next. “We’re not alive, are we? If we’re not taking the odd risk now and again.”

“No. No, we’re not.”

She hesitated to move where her instinct guided her, but Ann nudged her impatiently. “It doesn’t frighten me.”

Anne bent to give her a quick, gentle kiss and they parted with their faces glowing.

Five minutes before the meeting time was set, they arrived at the front gates of the garden. Rain was still streaming down, but under an umbrella their spirits weren’t dampened. Fifteen minutes later, though, no one had appeared, and Anne felt on the verge of tears. It had all been too exhausting – the searching, the waiting. Ann hadn’t spoken except to offer that the subway might be running late. Finally, Anne tugged at her arm. “Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute.”

“I can’t wait any more. I’m not as strong as you think.”

“Just a minute, Anne.”

They fell silent as a figure with an umbrella ascended the subway stairs. Anne didn’t let herself look up until it was clear the woman was approaching them. About ten feet away, she paused, and Anne glanced up very slowly, from a pair of boots, to jeans, to raincoat, to the familiar face from her album. And she could not move.

“Do you know,” her mother said, in a voice that was husky and low like Anne’s, “I don’t think an hour passed when I didn’t think about you. I tried not to. But every time I closed my eyes…there you were.” 

She felt like this was a dream that might disappear. But Ann’s hand in hers was real, and she stepped forward as her friend waited with the umbrella. Slowly, she and her mother embraced, holding each other as if they might never let go.


End file.
